When cooking foods in a pan, skittle, etc., it is well known in the art that the foods being cooked are often accompanied by cooking liquids which need to be drained from these foods during the cooking process and/or before these foods are served for consumption. These cooking liquids to be drained may originate from ingredients such as various cooking oils, butter, margarine, etc., added to the food during the cooking process, and/or they may originate directly from the process of cooking the foods to be consumed, for example, grease emerging from bacon, water from vegetables, etc.
In all cases, it becomes necessary to readily drain these cooking liquid from the pan without also spilling from the pan, the foods being cooked. In some instances, drainage during cooking is desirable. In other instances, drainage after cooking, or as an intermediate step in cooking (e.g., separation of a sauce or gravy), is desirable. Sometime, the liquids being drained are discarded, while other times, they are retained as a sauce or gravy or coating or topping for the eventual meal.
While it is common practice, for example, to hold a portion of a pan cover against the pan while the pan is tilted so as to allow cooking liquid to be drained while retaining the contents, as shown in FIG. 1, this is cumbersome and susceptible to error whereby either the cooking liquid does not get properly drained, and/or the food being cooked spills or fall from the pan along with the cooking liquid being drained.
The prior art contains some efforts to address this situation, but none of these are fully satisfactory. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,733,450, 2,163,46, 3,847,068, 5,388,732 and 5,967,024 all disclose various spouts integral with the cooking pan, yet all of these entail draining over the top rim of the pan, and the problems one confronts in retaining the food being cooked when tilting the pan to pour off fluids are not resolved. Similarly, fluids in the collecting pot 20 of U.S. Pat. No. 1,447,813,which is “secured to the side 13 wall by rivets 19,” see page 1, line 66, are also not easily drained without first removing the food being cooked from the pan.
It would be desirable to fabricate within the a pan, skillet, etc., a means for easily draining cooking liquids from the food being cooked, which does not have the various disadvantages of the prior art devices and methods.
Throughout this disclosure and in the associated claims, we shall use the term “pan” or “cooking pan” to encompass any and all pans, skillets, frypans, saucepans, etc., of any and all shapes and sizes, used for the frying, searing, and/or browning of foods.